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The world of the primary school
The world of the primary school

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3.2 Children’s and parents’ views of teaching assistants

What do children and parents think of teaching assistants? Curiously little has been written about their perspectives. A small-scale study involving 78 primary-aged children in England (Eyres et al., 2004) showed that children can, when asked, differentiate between their own class teacher and other adults who work with them. However, the children reported a substantial overlap between the activities of teachers and teaching assistants. For instance, as Eyres et al. (2004) quote,

Eight-year-old Sarah said:

‘Well, the helpers seem to help out and do what the teacher does and the teacher seems to mostly teach children. But sometimes the helpers teach children.’

Eleven-year-old Lisette speculated:

‘Well, Miss McAngel is the actual teacher, teacher, teacher. She actually teaches us everything because she’s just a teacher and she teaches us everything. But, if you like, you’ve got another teacher, they teach us – pretty much they’d teach us everything but Miss McAngel would do different things with us – d’you know what I mean? – sort of, I can’t put it into words really – but – can you help? (looking towards Tim, her friend).’

(Eyres et al., 2004, pp. 157–8)

To a large extent, teachers and teaching assistants were seen by the children in this study as working in ‘interdependent’ ways, with each making a significant contribution to children’s learning.

With regard to parents, a survey of parents’ perceptions of assistants by two specialist teacher assistants working at Roche Community School in Cornwall (Strongman and Mansfield, 2004) found that most of the parents placed great value on the contribution of teaching assistants. As one parent wrote, ‘They are of value as a backup for the teacher, as an extra pair of eyes in the classroom.’ Another parent noted, ‘A good assistant can be priceless in the classroom. With up to thirty-seven children in each class, how could a teacher do her job effectively without assistants?’

Described image
Figure 4 Soraya’s drawing shows the range of adults who worked in her Year 2 classroom.

However, while these parents recognised the important role of assistants in their children’s primary school, many also felt that there should be a clear distinction between the roles of teachers and teaching assistants. As one parent said, ‘Teaching assistants should not “teach” the class, they should only assist the teacher.’ The extent to which this linguistic distinction – between ‘teaching’ and ‘assisting’ – can be maintained in classrooms when many teachers and teaching assistants are now working closely together in teams is open to question. When a teaching assistant ‘assists’ or ‘supports’ or ‘helps’ a child, there is always the possibility that the child will learn. Therefore, it could be said that the assistant has ‘taught’ that child, just as it could be said that parents teach their children many things, and children often teach each other.

Perhaps a more appropriate way of thinking about this is to say that teachers, as qualified professionals, hold the overall responsibility for what goes on in a classroom in terms of learning and teaching. Children, it seems, understand this. In the study by Eyres et al. (2004) a number of children were clear that the teachers in their classrooms were ultimately in charge. As 6-year-old Sam commented:

Well, Mrs Wilson and Mrs Georgio [both teaching assistants] don’t tell us what to do. Mrs Watts [the teacher] tells us what to do.

(Eyres et al., 2004, p. 155)

However, the comments of Jessica Mason, teaching assistant at Fulbridge Academy, suggest that in some schools at least this distinction may have become less marked in the decade since Eyres et al. carried out their research, as the nature of the roles carried out by support staff has continued to evolve.